


The way she's built

by whichstiel



Series: Season 14 Codas [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s14e19 Jack in the Box, F/M, Gen, Heaven, spn 14x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 14:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Being in Heaven is like being put away on a high shelf. The view is lovely and lofty, and you sit up there collecting dust for effectively an eternity.





	The way she's built

Being in Heaven is like being put away on a high shelf. The view is lovely and lofty, and you sit up there collecting dust for effectively an eternity. 

Now that Mary has been out and around the flip side of resurrection, it’s easier to see the cracks at the seams. Now she understands the veneer of joy laid thickly across her memories as something manufactured, almost. It’s a joint delusion, doubly so now that she’s finally sharing Heaven with a real person. With John.

They revisit their greatest hits together. The drives to the reservoir to “stargaze.” Those nights in the back of the car, or the hood, or the summer-prickly grass just beyond the gravel lot. Skin on skin, breath on breath. Their wedding, half hosted by scowling Campbells, and somehow all the sweeter for it. Playing with an infant Dean together as a family, bare toes in the clover and laughing in the sunshine. 

Time passes, or maybe it doesn’t. The memories stretch on, infinite in the moment and as fleet-footed as dreams. 

It gets…old. Mary sits on the old half rotted porch swing of their first house, one toe pushing against the sun-warmed planks to move them gently in a wobbling, wafting rhythm. She sighs and watches the line of sun and shadow dance up and down her leg. “This sun isn’t real,” she says to John, although there’s no real mourning behind it. She had a real sun and now there’s this echo instead. It’s not bad, just different. 

“Still warm, though.” John has mellowed from his time in Heaven. Even when Mary knew him on Earth before the fire - before the end - he had an edge to him. He’d pushed just as hard as her for the apple pie life, after all. The war had sunk its teeth into him and left a scar a mile deep, though he would never admit it out loud. 

“True,” Mary concedes. “Still. Wonder what’s out there?” She jerks her chin down the road. It’s their old neighborhood, tiny pastel houses and brambly landscaping bracketing each property into poorly sketched rectangles. “Do you wonder what’s…beyond?”

“Beyond what? Heaven?”

Mary rolls her eyes at John, who is simultaneously a grizzled, older stranger and the young man she married so many years ago. “Beyond our heaven, yes. Did you know there’s a network of people? Ex-hunters or souls who’ve learned to game the system. There’s a whole bunch of them spread out through Heaven. Just…living their best life. Or, afterlife.”

“Huh.” John picks at a fleck of peeling paint. It springs free, only to reappear the moment he moves his hand to another spot. “I never tried to leave.”

Mary scrunches her nose. “Really? Why not?”

John cracks a knuckle carelessly. “Never wanted to. I lived a hard life without you. With the boys. Coming here…I got a little peace.” His teeth tease at his lower lip and then he says, “But having you here. The real you? Oh, Mary, I was missing so much.”

“So you’ll go with me? Out into the—” Mary laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t know if ‘world’ is the right word to use.”

“Out into the world,” John says, and his eyes crinkle in just the right way to turn her entire midsection into a flock of useless butterflies. 

 

** * * * **

“What are you?” Mary asks the woman sitting placidly in a set of warded cuffs that some wayward soul over the centuries had stolen off of an angel. 

The woman, a slim thing with a long peaked face, wide Bambi eyes, and dark skin, grins. Her smile is beatific. “I’m an angel,” she says in a cotton-candy voice. For the fifth time since they captured her and brought her to Jo Harvelle’s heaven, she spreads her wings wide. It’s more ebullient display than threat. The air rings with celestial song and the shadows stretch from wall to wall. 

“Looks like an angel,” somebody mutters from the back.

John just looks at her, eyes narrowed like he’s trying to diagnose a faulty engine. “I’ve never seen an angel,” he admits at last. “But something just doesn’t…feel right.”

“Understatement,” Jo says, and a dimple appears as she grins maliciously at the woman in the chair, and leans forward to pass a hand through her shadow wings.

“Well, you’re right on that count, champ.” Ash slaps John on the shoulder, rocking him forward. He clutches what looks like a very old, boxy laptop in one arm. Ash, as far as Mary can tell, knows absolutely everyone in Heaven from either running around the celestial margins for years, or his time on Earth. He and John seem to have a tacit understanding that their prior friendship on Earth is Class X: Do Not Disclose. 

“What do you mean?” Mary asks impatiently. She didn’t walk away from a brand-new store-bought roasted chicken picnic in her own heaven to deal with this kind of runaround. 

Ash swivels his screen around, revealing meaningless green-lit gibberish. He points to a spike of what looks like Enochian letters all typed on top of each other. “She’s an angel. Sort of. But she’s also human.”

“I’m an angel,” the woman repeats again. Her smile is like a wave from a queen. 

“Yeah. Not so much…” Ash sucks in one cheek and chews on it. His rattail curls around his shoulders like a luxuriant boa. “The way she’s built…it’s off.”

Something breaks in the woman’s calm veneer and she glares icicles at Ash. “I was human, but now I’m better.” She gestures around. “This. Is better.” 

“You were human?” Mary hums thoughtfully. “What happened?” As an afterthought she adds, “And what’s your name?”

“Well, my given name is Mary,” the woman smiles. 

Mary laughs outright. She steps back for a moment and shares a moment of disbelief with John. “Of course it is,” she says. Even in Heaven, the life metaphors apparently need to follow her like a bludgeon. 

The other Mary ignores her. “But my new name is Sharondriel. Um. After my mother." She clears her throat. "A young man brought me here. Turned me into an angel.” She frowns. “But Heaven is…Heaven has been…” Her brows crease further in delicate dismay. “It’s not what I thought.”

“Welcome to reality,” Mary deadpans, gesturing around to Jo Harvelle’s heaven. For some reason, Jo’s latest memory involves a lot of people in suits and slim, small dresses. It’s twilight and the milling crowd of illusory, gorgeous extras appears to be at a pool party. Everyone’s wearing sunglasses.

Jo snorts, and Mary thinks she’s right: Jo’s current “memory” is entirely made up. Mary shakes her head. It is entirely too easy to game the system here. There’s so much _power_. 

Mary takes a different tack and drops down to sit on her heels. She smiles kindly at the other Mary. Er, Sharondriel. “Heaven isn’t everything we were promised,” she says. “But we’re working to make it better. You could join us? Help us.” She indicates the cuffs. “We could use someone like you. An angel.” She manages a perfect poker face.

It works, because Mary is a damned professional, even in death. The winged woman looks around at the crowd of humans, at Jo’s absurd heaven which now has a group of six-foot-tall basketball players trooping through it, actual orange balls clutched under muscular arms. Her wings flutter, like a bird in a dust bath. “I could…help you?” Her frown drops away and somehow what’s left is a look of absolute sincerity, edged with desperate fear. Whatever happened to twist her soul hasn’t wiped away the desperately innocent humanity clinging to her. “I’d like that.”

“Good,” Mary says, gesturing peremptorily for the keys to the cuffs. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> A full week late, have a Mary coda. I hope we see her next season!
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


End file.
